Disagreements still in control of Dist. 220 start time discussions
One of the points that seemingly everyone in the room seemed to agree upon during a community discussion on start times at Barrington Area Unit School District 220 school was that the start times should be moved back to improve student health and education.
But during the 2 hour and 15 minute discussion Tuesday night — as well as pretty much every time the subject has come up over the past year — the disagreements cropped up while picking through the details.
“If there was an easy answer that satisfied everyone on everything, I guarantee the seven of us would vote on it,” Board President Brian Battle said, referring to the school board. “There has to be give and take.”
During the discussion, parents voiced their concerns about how start times could affect the quality of the district's education, how school bus routes could be more efficient, how one school level should be made to start before another and many other topics.
Unlike during other school board meetings, after the audience voiced their concerns or asked questions, they got a response from a member of the board or administration.
District parent Christine Bedard said she was frustrated that she had to wait until November to hear the board's decision.
The board has yet to discuss specific plans. Board member Penny Kazmier said the board hadn't yet talked about the specifics of the start time options they are considering because they want make sure they've crossed their t's and dotted their i's.
“That may be frustrating, but I hope you value our desire to have accuracy and put forward options that are thoroughly vetted,” Kazmier said.
One thing revealed during the discussion was that a work group made up of Kazmier, board member Sandra Bradford, Superintendent Brian Harris and other members of the administration has been crafting options for the board as a whole to consider.
One of the biggest decisions the board will have to make is which school level — either elementary, middle, or high school — will have to start their day first, because it would be prohibitively expensive to start them all at the same time, even though, as Bradford said after the meeting, everyone wants to start at 8:30 a.m.
“(The work group) is looking where we can gain efficiencies, that's all there is to it,” Harris said after the meeting. “We're trying to shrink down the gap between when each level starts.”
Board members have set a Nov. 1 deadline to craft districtwide start times for the 2017-18 school year and beyond.
Harris said he thinks at the board's next meeting the work group will present the options they have discussed to the entire board and have an in-depth discussion about them.